He owned his home, had been married twice, and kept a bank account. It was reported that Peter still used the axe with a vim; the previous winter he had chopped forty cords of wood for anyone who would pay the price. The paper noted that he could be seen about Crouse with an axe and a walking stick, and that he delighted to talk about Christmas and hog-killing time.

School records place him in a related role. On May 21, 1924, the Lincoln County Annual School Fund Report listed payment to Peter Hoskins for rental of the church for school, seven months at one dollar per month. Lincoln County records also show that on January 23, 1873, the Board of Education, meeting with R. J. Johnston, S. V. Goodson, and J. C. Bess present, appointed committeemen in No. 11, the colored district: Peter Hoskins and Jno. Hamrick He appears in other county records as well. On December 3, 1906, the Gaston County Commissioners ordered the county treasurer to pay Peter Hoskins $2.50 for the expense of burying Will Hill. Will Hill had married Peter’s daughter Cora in 1900 and was only twenty-nine at his death.

Newspaper notices over the years are brief. On May 20, 1891, the Lincoln Courier reported that Peter Huskins was brought before the court for trespass on the lands of Moses Heavner and for attempted assault, fined five dollars and costs in the first case and placed under a twenty-five-dollar bond for Superior Court in the second. In September 1913 the Lincoln Times-News noted that he was on the sick list, unsure whether the trouble was appendicitis or “informashon of the stomach,” and the following week that he had “Sundayed” with his son Isreal at Zion Crossroads.

From Lincoln County census records, Peter and his first wife, Maggie, who died before 1897, had children Cora, Homer, Isreal “Iz”, Noah, Sallie, and Bryte. A Peter Hoskins, age six, appears in the 1870 Lincoln County census living in the Shuford home, raising the possibility of another son by that name. On July 15, 1897, he married his second wife, Lois Poston, and they had one daughter, Eva. Lois, also referred to as Louise, was born in 1852 in Lincoln County and died October 7, 1921, in Lincolnton. Peter himself died alone at home on February 22, 1929. Wennie Yoder later recalled her father telling the story of seeing Peter’s big toe sticking out from under the sheet when the funeral home took him away. Lincoln County estate papers show a drawn-out fight over his property, real and personal, valued at $476.00, among his surviving children and grandchildren.

Son, Homer Hoskins, born in North Carolina in 1880, died at the County Home in Iron Station on January 15, 1927, and is buried in Crouse, possibly at the Hoskins family cemetery across the road from the home site. But it is certain that Peter is buried in that location as his death certificate indicates that fact. Extensive research has shown that the surviving children married and moved to Forsyth County. Whether these family members are buried in the Hoskins family cemetery is not known. The cemetery is believed to be across the road from where the Peter Hoskin house sat in a small cusp of trees. Approximately ten years ago Terry Waldrop, Dolly Aderholt, and the writer attempted to locate graves in the cemetery area but found none, the ground being tree-covered, uneven, and pitted terrain.

Peter Hoskins’s long presence in Howards Creek Township rests on the 1924 claim that he was the first of his race to live there and the only colored landowner in the township at that time. The surviving record shows a man who worked on the railroad, chopped wood, kept a bank account, and opened his own home on Boy Scout Road so that Union Church worship could be heard by not only the Negro congregation but by Crouse neighbors standing in the yard. That same house/church was later rented for a school serving the Negro community. The estate papers after 1929 show that ownership of the place was never simple. What remains clear from the newspapers, the school fund, and the memories of Crouse residents is that, for a stretch of years after the war, Peter’s house served as both home, school, and the meeting place known as Union Church for the Negro community around Crouse.

Sources

Transcribed newspaper articles from Newspapers.com (Lincoln Times-News, May 8 and July 21, 1924; September 2 and 9, 1913; The Lincoln Courier, May 20, 1891) and notes compiled for the Crouse Community History & Photo Project, including recollections of Robert Dellinger and Wennie Yoder.